TREES-3 - Forest cover change assessment for tropical South and Central America based on a systematic sampling of medium resolution satellite imagery– data, methods and first results for year 2010

The TREES-3 project of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre has monitored tropical forest cover change with medium to high resolution satellite imagery for the reference years 1990, 2000 and 2010 on basis of a regular grid of 10 km x 10 km samples located at every full degree confluence, giving a total of 1230 sample sites for tropical South and Central America and the Caribbean. For the years 1990 and 2000, imagery from the Landsat sensors covered 99% of all sample sites, and for the year 2010, 86% of all sample, a further 13% of the sample sites are covered by imagery from other sensors, leaving 1% of the sample sites not covered due to the lack of good quality (cloud-free) images. All satellite images are pre-processed, including a check for geo-location, conversion to top-of-atmosphere reflectance, atmospheric correction (haze-correction and masking of cloud and cloud shadow) and normalized by a pseudo-invariant feature approach on basis of dense evergreen humid forest areas. Land cover maps are produced for each sample site and for each reference year with the following classes: tree cover, tree cover mosaic, other wooded land, other land and water. The first estimates of forest cover change between the years 1990 and 2010 have been produced by extrapolation of 175 samples to the study area of the Brazilian Cerrado biome. The resulting yearly deforestation rates for the Cerrado for the periods 1990-2000 and 2000-2010 were 0.6% and 1.0% respectively.

BEUCHLE Rene';  SELIGER Roman;  RASI Rastislav;  EVA Hugh;  ACHARD Frederic; 

2013-05-13

Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE)

JRC79586